Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/47

, Marconi with his wireless, Langley and the Wrights with their aeroplanes—were concerned with improving the civilian processes of production and transportation, or with adding material richness to modern life. Those who, in biology and kindred sciences, followed the paths blazed by the giants of the nineteenth century, were even more directly benevolent in their ends. Ehrlich and Takamine worked to save, preserve and lengthen human life. No first-class scientific mind was interested in research having for its end to destroy human life.

Nor did the military caste, whose business—stripped of all its gold lace and brass buttons—was to kill, add anything fundamental to the science of destruction. It is traditional that what few real improvements there have been in armament, such as the machine-gun and the submarine, were invented by civilians and by them sold to armies. Military life tends to destroy originality. It makes for daring action, makes against daring thought. In the second place, there was the code. Professional soldiers wanted, sincerely wanted, to render warfare as merciful as possible, They shrank from carrying the thing out to its logical conclusion. Killing by gas had been theoretically proposed long before the war; and most military men had repudiated the idea. They had even fixed their objection in the stern agreements of the Second Hague Conference.

But from April 22, 1915 that agreement and all similar agreements were abrogated. The Germans